Before we start, I should probably declare myself an optimist.
You have to be, don’t you, if you have been a Newcastle United fan for any length of time?
Across the decades there have been periods when optimism was less a personality trait and more a basic survival mechanism. Sometimes it’s been pretty much all I’ve had.
So, I’m going into this season trying really hard to be optimistic, but optimism doesn’t mean ignoring what happened last season because if you look at Newcastle’s form during the second half of it, there are some fairly uncomfortable numbers.
The question is whether they tell us Newcastle United are in trouble, or whether there’s a bit more to the story.
So I started with the simplest possible question, then kept drilling down and trying to level the playing field as I went.
I started with the second half of last season.
Take every Premier League club’s final 19 matches and build a new league table. Newcastle finish 14th.
P19 W7 D2 L10 – 23 points – 1.21 PPG (points per game)
Over a full season, that’s about 46 points. Not relegation form, but certainly not good. Newcastle were performing and looking like a lower-mid-table side.
So, I shortened it again to the final nine games and we remained 14th: P9 W3 D1 L5 – 10 points – 1.11 PPG. That’s roughly a 42 point season. So, the conclusion seems straightforward – Newcastle United ended last season struggling and possibly got slightly worse as the season progressed. Except there’s a big problem in this assumption in that, given the transfer activity this summer (outgoings), who was actually playing?
Bruno Guimaraes, Sandro Tonali and Anthony Gordon were three of Newcastle’s most important players – and I do not want to rake over old ground, they have gone, I accept that and we move on but how important were they for us last season? However, to do this we also need to understand that in the last half of last season all three of them were not available for every match.
Bruno provides the most obvious example as across the final 19:
With Bruno: P11 W5 D2 L4 – 1.55 PPG
Without Bruno: P8 W2 D0 L6 – 0.75 PPG
That’s roughly a 59 point season with Bruno and 29 point season without him. I next looked at the occasions when Bruno, Tonali and Gordon all played. There were only four: P4 W3 D1 L0 – 10 points – 2.50 PPG
When at least one was missing: P15 W4 D1 L10 – 13 points – 0.87 PPG
That’s an absolutely massive difference! But four games, statistically speaking is not significant, it’s a very small sample and those four opponents weren’t particularly strong either – Palace, Leeds, Wolves and Spuds. So, I decided to adjust the comparison in an attempt to level the playing field. Firstly, I removed every team that finished in the top six from the games where Newcastle were missing at least one of the three. That leaves us with:
All three playing, top six removed: P4 – 10 points – 2.50 PPG
At least one missing, top six removed: P9 – 10 points – 1.11 PPG
Newcastle United took as many points from four games with all three playing as they did from nine without them all available. But even this is not comparable, so I tightened it again by only counting matches against teams that finished 11th–20th in order to try and compare us against broadly similar lower-half opposition and it gave me this:
All three playing: P4 W3 D1 L0 – 10 points – 2.50 PPG
At least one missing: P5 W1 D1 L3 – 4 points – 0.80 PPG
That’s 83% of available points with all three compared with just 27% when at least one was missing! The samples are really small, so nobody should pretend Newcastle were genuinely a 2.5 PPG team. But every time I tried to remove an obvious distortion from the comparison, in the hope I would see an improvement in the numbers, the same pattern remains – and then there’s Bruno! Against those same 11th-20th teams:
With Bruno: P7 W4 D2 L1 – 14 points – 2.00 PPG
Without Bruno: P2 W0 D0 L2 – 0 points
The two-game Bruno-absent sample is obviously way too small to mean much on its own, but alongside Newcastle United averaging 1.55 PPG with him and 0.75 without him across the full 19 game period, it’s difficult to ignore the pattern.
So what does it mean for this new season?
Newcastle United unquestionably struggled during the second half of last season. But the headline “14th over the final 19 games” doesn’t tell the whole story as when key players were missing Newcastle’s results deteriorated badly. When Bruno played, they were substantially better. When Bruno, Tonali and Gordon were all playing, albeit across a small sample, they were better again.
And now all three have gone. That doesn’t mean we’re doomed – I am a self declared optimist after all, but it does mean that I think the ambition this season has changed. For me, this season isn’t about Europe or pretending we’re immediately going to replace everything we’ve lost and carry on where we once hoped to be.
This season is about building and surviving.
For me, the target is simple:
40 points.
Get there, stay in the Premier League and give the new team time to develop. The question in my mind though, is whether we’ve adequately replaced enough of what Bruno, Tonali and Gordon gave us to do that. Last season clearly showed us what Newcastle United could look like when those players weren’t there. Now we find out whether their replacements can change the outcome, it’s a very tough ask for a bunch of unproven youngsters. For me the ambition this season has changed significantly.
Forty points. Build. Survive. Then go again.